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I just hope it’s enough to convince everyone that we’re marrying for love.
Enough to convince the Wakefields. Enough to benefit my business.
17
Simone
Grams is on the couch, watching her favorite mystery show, when I walk into the living room. Her wheelchair sits next to the couch, empty but not forgotten.
I hand her a smoothie I made especially for her. I started making the drinks a few years ago after I began seeing a naturopath. I still have both ovaries, but the fear of developing early onset menopause was real. The smoothies were a precaution. Just in case.
“How about I take you for a walk once your show’s finished?” I ask.
“That sounds great, dear.” Her gaze remains on the screen.
I walk down the hallway to my bedroom, but then change my mind and continue to Aiden’s childhood room.
I pause at the closed door, and a gentle tugging in my gut tells me it’s time that I go into his room. My palms grow clammy. I wipe them on my shorts. Just do it. At some point you’ll need to face your ghosts. Some of them, anyway.
I take a deep breath…and for the first time since returning to Maple Ridge, I open the door and step inside Aiden’s old room.
The room hasn’t changed much from before he left for college. The same faded navy and white quilt. Photos on the corkboard above his desk. Pictures of him in his hockey uniforms. Pictures of his friends. Pictures of Grams and me.
One of my favorites is from the last time all our friends stayed at Granddad’s hunting cabin, a week before Aiden and Lucas left for basic training. We’d been sitting around the fire, drinking beer and making s’mores. I was seated in the middle of the log, Aiden and Lucas flanking me. We were laughing at something Zara had said.
We looked happy, carefree. Unaware that a few years later everything would change, and Lucas and I would be left with an empty hole where my brother used to be.
A familiar numbness creeps under my skin, bringing with it a flood of memories.
Memories of Aiden helping me with my math homework. Of the nights I’d woken in tears from a nightmare. He’d let me climb into bed with him and tell me stories about Mom and Dad.
I unpin the photo of the three of us from the corkboard. After he left the Marines, Aiden lived with Grams for a few months before moving into an apartment. She said it was because he was a grown man who needed his privacy. Now I have to wonder if it was due to something else.
If it was because of the demons he was dealing with.
Demons he didn’t want us to know about.
I open his desk drawer and search through it. It’s pretty much empty, other than some scraps of blank paper, pens, and paper clips. I remove them, shut the drawer, and return to my room. I place them in the box on my bed containing the stuff I’ll eventually take to Lucas’s home. My new home.
I slide open my desk drawer to see if there’s anything useful there. I haven’t looked inside it since coming back to town. If memory serves me correctly, it’s mostly just junk that teenage-me thought was valuable.
Turns out I’m right.
I remove the glittery stickers, multicolored gel pens, hair elastics, and dump them into the box. Once I’ve cleared out the stuff I want and tossed the rest into the trash can, I push the drawer shut.
A scrap of paper, folded several times, lies on the floor near my feet. A scrap of paper I’m positive wasn’t there before I opened the desk drawer. It must’ve gotten caught on something and fallen out when I removed whatever the paper was attached to.
I pick the paper up and unfold it, revealing a single word on the page.
CATFISH
I don’t know what it means, but I recognize Aiden’s handwriting.
I flip the paper over, but there’s nothing on the back.
When we were younger, we loved to play spy games. We even created a code based on something our World War II history buff of a father had taught Aiden. But nothing about the word hints that this was a message Aiden had left me. And what does it matter even if it was a message? Aiden is dead.
I crunch the paper into a tight ball and drop it into the trash can.
